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Dan McDonald and his brother spotted police surveillance on the modest New Street home weeks ago.

“There was a suveillance car there the last couple of weeks - sitting right out front of my steps. My brother noticed them first – always the same three guys.”

Ironically, McDonald said he’s never really noticed the two men arrested at the house this morning.

“I knew the previous couple – helped build the front steps for them – but they moved out about 6 months ago. I don’t know when these men moved in.”

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Another neighbour, Rhonda Henry, who grew up one door away from the suspected drug lab, said the two men “were nice guys, no trouble at all.” Not the type one would associate with running a clandestine steroid lab.

“They definitely weren’t body-builders,” said Henry. “At least they didn’t look like body-builders,” she added with a laugh. “They were pretty average looking, I helped shovel snow off their sidewalk, they’d brush the snow off my car.”

Police moved in force Wednesday morning, striking against what they say is a suspected illegal steroid lab being run out of a modest home at 49 New Street.

It’s the second raid on a steroid lab in Hamilton in a matter of weeks, and OPP Det. Staff Sgt. Scott Mills confirmed it’s no coincidence.

“Yes, they’re related” he said during a brief interview.

“Two men are in custody, but we haven’t laid any charges yet. It’s pretty fresh.”

Neighbour Henry said that while she, and the other she spoke with during the raid, were initially concerned about the heavy police and fire presence, they’re not worried now.

“No, there are no concerns, no worries here,” she said. The arrested neighbours were friendly, ordinary in ways that stood in sharp contrast to the morning raid.

“It was a shock, it was surprising, actually,” Henry said.

Mills said that after a morning briefing that brought together members of the OPP central drug enforcement unit, Hamilton police, fire and EMS, a controlled substance production warrant was executed at 9 a.m. at 49 New Street.

The home is at the corner of New Street and Henry Street, New Street runs between Main and King Streets, just East of Dundurn Street and is blocked while police search the building. Mills said they hope to have the street open by afternoon rush hour.

On Wednesday morning, the small street was chaotic and crowded with the raid team shutting the street down entirely and erecting blue polypropylene decontamination tents opposite the house and men with HazMat (hazardous material) suits moving in and out of the building.

One neighbour, who asked not to be identified, said he returned from an 8am trip to the grocery store to find a few policeman on the street, “so I knew something was going on.” The man lives within a ball toss of the targeted home and says an officer warned him this morning that there’d be fire trucks on the street pretty soon and he wouldn’t be able to use his car.

McDonald, Henry – all the neighbours we spoke with – described the small trio of streets as a quiet, family focused neighbourhood.

Mills, the central drug enforcement operations co-ordinator for the OPP, said the HazMat suits, the specially-trained “clandestine lab” investigators and the emergency people and equipment on site are necessary for safety and dictated by a provincial protocol.

“Our investigators train with the local teams,” Mills explained.

Wednesday’s raid follows a similar operation at a larger, newly-built home on the mountain March 22. In that raid police say they found PIEDs, (performance, image, enhancing drugs - steroids) cocaine and methamphetamine. Two people, a man and a woman at the Upper Wellington Street home were arrested and face drug possession and trafficking charges.

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